My Opinion on the Story of Kael'thas Sunstrider (WoW Lore)

Nobbel87 just released a video about the full story of Kael'thas Sunstrider, and as I'm very interested in the lore of World of Warcraft and have watched many of Nobbel's videos before.

The story starts off when about how Sylvanas and the High Elves fought against Arthas and the Undead in the absense. It also talks about Quel'thalas, the Highborn, the Naga and many more big elements in the lore of World of Warcraft.

The city of Quel'thalas

I think Blizzard did a great job at this storyline and the beginning of it was so awesome that you wouldn't expect it to ever turn bad. Until he had to serve Grand Marshal Garithos. That guy is probably the most selfish (and honestly even dumb) leader in the history of World of Warcraft. He didn't even want to admit that Prince Kael'thas made a smart decision by working together with the "vile" Naga who also despised the "vile" Undead.

Lady Vashj

That was until Lady Vashj decided to bring him to Outland for him to serve the demon Illidan. This is where the storyline kind of stopped making sense for me: first he hesitated to even accept a gift from Lady Vashj because she was a servant of Illidan and then he just goes ahead and marches into Outland to serve Illidan along with her. Why? If the earlier part of the storyline was right, he was more than wise enough to know that taking the path of the demons was a lot less honorable of a decision than facing Garithos and perhaps dieing in the process. 

Illidan Stormrage

Taking the decision of staring death in the eyes was a decision only a strong leader could have made, and apparently his addiction to magic had driven him so mad that he saw no other way out than to side with the demon Illidan, who he had despised before he made this decision, and possibly allow the demon to force his people into slavery. That could've happened. You never know what's on a demon like Illidan's mind.

The demon promised him more magic than the elf could ever imagine, and immeadiately made the guy his right hand while that same elf had helped the people who damned him by forcing him into retreat on his mission to destroy the Lich King, forced the hatred of Kil'jaeden upon the demon and still Stormrage trusted Kael'thas that much. That sounsd kind of fishy, but I guess Illidan knew how desperate the elves were as he, too, turned to Fel magic to feed his addiction.

Fel Magic

The second fight against the Lich King, with Arthas defending the King and the elves helping the demon Illidan Stormrage, failed as well and they were forced into retreat once again. What a fail, even with the help of yet another race Illidan couldn't kill a single man. Why didn't the elves help the demon in his fight against the Lich King, and where were the Scourge? I guess they didn't think their cutscenes through...

Illidan and the Lich King facing off

Now, the humans came back in. They were helped by the Naaru this time, so you'd expect the humans to win easily. That's not the case, however. Tempest Keep, while easily being able to teleport away, ended up getting captured and the Naaru didn't even care about it. Wait... What? The Naaru didn't care about their own home getting invaded by an evil force? Almost everyone would be mad and imeadiately taking arms to reclaim what's theirs, but apparently these beings were so "Holy" that they didn't even care about it.

M'uru, the Naaru that stayed in Tempest Keep

The elves got more and more heavily addicted to this new Fel magic and they were corrupted (just like the Orcs were before them), even though Kael'thas told Vashj that "his people would never be that desperate". As they got corrupted, their eyes turned from blue to green. This is only minor compared to the Orcs fully turning green, but it's still a sign of their corruption.

Kael'thas teamed up with Kil'jaeden, so he was now the puppet of an even more powerful and evil being. Akama told Illidan about it and just like that, Illidan was now after his servant Kael'thas. He didn't kill the elf himself, though, we as players ended up killing the guy. But not actually killing him, he was reborn. Deformed yet alive. In World of Warcraft, an important character in the lore can't just be killed by killing them once: they always end up coming back (see the Lich King leaving Illidan for dead in Northrend, yet the demon getting saved by his servants and him actually returning). That's something pretty weird about the game and I think they made the decision because it's too hard to keep a game going with all-new characters every expansion so re-using characters was probably the smartest decision and it adds a sense of mystery to the lore.

His second version ended up getting killed too, but he had already set events in motion and the Burning Legion was coming to Azeroth. They ended up coming, but the invasion was stopped and the Legion was blocked out of our reality.

It's an extremely exciting storyline with a whole lot to talk about. Out of all storylines I know within the game, this one will really stay on my mind for the longest time. I've even rewatched the full thing just for the sake of hearing the tale once again. The fact you can actually do that, means Blizzard sure did an amazing job at making their lore interesting and exciting.